How is property fraud defined?
In the realm of selling and buying houses and flats, property fraud is generally described as a fraudster who tries selling your home without any claim to the ownership, and without you knowing that the attempted unlawful sale is even happening.
This can most typically happen at properties where there is no full-time owner living in them or if the home is always vacant, or for houses for which no mortgage exists.
The HM Land Registry, a department of the UK government that oversees home registrations in England and Wales, says that since 2009 it has taken steps to prevent almost 280 fraudulent home registrations that had a total combined value of more than £133 million. That helps highlight just how costly property fraud has the potential to be.
What are the factors that increase the risk of property fraud?
On the HM Land Registry’s site you’ll find a helpful page dedicated to highlighting the risks of property fraud, including the factors that could make fraud more likely. These include:
- If you have had your identify stolen
- If you live in another country
- If your house or flat is empty
- If you rent out your home
- If you do not have a mortgage on your property
- If you have not registered your home with the HM Land Registry
What can be done to help prevent property fraud?
Thankfully, there are several relatively simple steps that you can take to guard against the risk of property fraud, and most of these will be either free or will not cost very much.
Put a restriction on your home
One prominent way that you can help to protect your rights over the property is by putting a restriction on the home’s title. Putting a restriction on the title prohibits HM Land Registry from officially registering any mortgages or sales on the home unless a solicitor or a conveyancer provides a signed certification that you submitted the registration request. That makes it very difficult for fraudsters to sell your home.
The cost of a placing a restriction on a property is free if you own it but don’t live in it, but if you do live in the house or flat then you can expect to pay £40 to issue the restriction.
Sign up for property registration alerts
HM Land Registry also offers the Land Registry Property Alert service, which is a free service you can sign up for, through which you will receive email alerts when certain activity occurs on your monitored properties, allowing you to take action if necessary.
This means that you’ll get an email notification whenever someone attempts to pursue any formal applications or other steps in the sale and purchase process against your property. These alerts can help you quickly respond to a scam while it’s happening.
Your options for selling a property and how to avoid fraud
Once you have read over the potential instances in which property fraud might occur, along with steps that you might be able to take to reduce it, the next action you’ll have to take is selecting which of four typical approaches you would like to use in order to find a buyer for your home.
The choices are selling to a quick home buyer, selling with an estate agent, selling at an auction or selling on your own. There are notable pros and cons linked with all four of these choices in terms of how much they cost, how fast you might be able to sell, and other vital factors. For example, you will not have to pay any commission if you opt for selling your property to a no-fee quick buyer like LDN Properties, but you will pay fees with an auctioneer or an estate agent.
It can be helpful to take some time and decide on your top aims with selling your home, such as your goal selling price, how speedily you want to sell, and whether you can accept paying any fees as part of the selling process. Then compare these priorities against the specific details of the four strategies below and this should identify the one that most closely suits your needs.
Selling to a quick home buyer
It’s a fast, free and easy process to check on the TPO registration status of any quick buyer. Simply visit the TPO’s website and click on the Find a Member tab and you will then be prompted to type in the name of a specific company to search for. Enter the name of the quick buyer that you are researching, and click “Submit,” and if they are genuinely a TPO member you will see their membership details.
If the company is not truly registered with TPO then your search will not produce any results, and you should never sell your home to this type of business because it may be a scam.
But selling to the legitimate quick home buying companies can be a stress-free, streamlined and no-hassle option. Because the honest businesses will never charge you any commission, this means you are assured of receiving the full proceeds from the sale of your home. This compares well to selling through either an auctioneer or an estate agent because both of those options will charge you a fee for selling your home, and this will be taken out of the proceeds.
Selling to a quick buyer is also often the most rapid way to sell almost any property, as the entire timeline should only be a few weeks from the start to the exchange of contracts. These companies can move so fast because they already have the necessary funds to buy your home, so there’s not waiting for weeks or months to first get approved for a mortgage to fund the purchase. So if you’re looking for a speedy sale, a quick buyer can be a great choice.
Quick buyers can also be an excellent selection for anyone that is trying to sell a so-called problem property that has some type of structural damage, legal dispute or other negative issue. These companies are renowned for making fair and speedy offers to buy practically any home no matter its age, condition, location, shape, size, type or any other factors.
LDN Properties, for example, launched in 2003 and since then its many varied purchases and offers made throughout the UK have included, but are not limited to, flats without a license to alter, houses that have an absence of easement, properties damaged by storms, homes above commercial premises, flats with a leaking roof, houses of multiple occupancy, properties with solar panels, homes that have elevated levels of radon, flats with cladding, houses that are situated near to railway lines or a train station, properties with an absent freeholder and other scenarios.
If you do accept the initial offer, the quick buyer will then send a representative to your home so that they can inspect the interior and exterior before the company makes a final offer. This is the only viewing you will have to agree to, compared to possibly dozens or more viewings from prospective buyers that you could have to endure when selling using other methods.
And should you agree to the final offer, the quick buyer will then move rapidly to work with your solicitor or other legal representative to complete all of the necessary legal documents to finalise the sale. It should only take a handful of weeks from when you first contact the quick buyer until you are able to exchange contracts and receive the full proceeds from selling your property.
Selling with an estate agent
One traditional way to sell your home is using an estate agent, who will do almost all the work needed to identify a buyer. They will first produce a listing that describes your property and features photographs of the inside and outside, and then advertise this in local newspapers, online and in their office. Next, the estate agent will hear offers from potential buyers, with the goal of eventually guiding one of these offers to the final stage of exchanging contracts.
For putting in all of this effort, the average estate agent may charge you commission at a rate from 1.15 percent to 1.40 percent of your home’s final sale price, although the price level of commission could be higher or lower than this range. The fee will increase your overall selling expenses because it will be subtracted immediately from the final sale proceeds.
In addition to having to pay commission, another drawback of selling with an estate agent is that it can take a very long time – possible more than a year before you get a serious offer. Homeowners whose top priority is selling their property as swiftly as feasible should review other options, such as selling to a quick buyer like LDN Properties. These companies can usually finalise the purchase of any home within just a few weeks after contacting them.
Also, someone could make a legitimate offer but then later cancel it, which they can do without facing any risk of a penalty if you have not yet exchanged contracts. This would also significantly extend your selling timeline as you’d have to start over with seeking a buyer, making it another disadvantage associated with selling via an estate agent.
Selling at a property auction
Auctions are an uncertain way to sell a home because you might not get any bids on your property, which means that it does not sell. You would then have to begin again with trying to find a buyer for your house or flat, possibly adding much more time to the process.
Even if your property does eventually sell at the auction, this can still be a slow way to secure a buyer. There’s a long wait of many weeks or even months between the day that you choose this method and the day the auction happens. And if the home sells, the buyer has about a month to sign all the required documents and finish the other tasks needed to complete the purchase.
You will also have to pay the auctioneer commission if your property manages to sell, and this can be one of the biggest drawbacks of this selling method.
Many auctioneers charge their fee at 2.5 percent of the property’s final sale price, although the exact commission may be above or below this amount. The fee is deducted right away from the auction proceeds, which will increase your costs. You might be able to convince an auctioneer to either reduce how commission they will charge, or to have the winning bidder pay a share of your expenses, so it is always worthwhile asking whether these might be viable options.
The auctioneer imposes this fee in exchange for the effort that they put in to selling your property. This begins with creating a listing and marketing it ahead of the auction, in order to get potential bidders interested in it. The auctioneer will also take care of hosting the auction itself, and they will oversee the last steps of finalising the successful sale of your flat or house.
Selling without any help
Alternatively, you might be interested in selling without any assistance from an estate agent or an auctioneer. This puts the burden on you to complete all of the actions needed to find a buyer, which starts with creating a listing then advertising it, scheduling viewings and hearing offers from prospective buyers, with the goal of getting one to the exchange of contracts.
This is a huge amount of work in total and it will require a lot of your effort and time, and even then it might take more than an entire year before you are able to secure a buyer. That’s why you should only really consider selling this way if you have prior experience with selling properties, or if you have a qualified family member or friend that is open to helping you with the sale at no charge. Otherwise you risk putting yourself through a very stressful situation.
Selling this way has the same problem that can occur with using an estate agent, in that someone can make an honest offer to buy your house or flat but then later decide against it and cancel the offer. This would cause the sale to fall apart, adding much more time to your selling schedule because you will have to start again with trying to find another buyer. And you can’t penalise the person that withdraw the offer unless you have already exchanged contracts.
You may find that the only prominent advantage of selling on your own is that you would not have to pay commission to an estate agent or an auctioneer for finding a buyer for the house or flat, which will assist with reducing your selling costs. But you could find that any saving you make this way is easily cancelled out by the funds that you will need to spend on advertising your listing and various other tasks.
If you are determined to not pay any commission on the sale of your home, you may want to instead consider selling to a no-fee quick buyer like LDN Properties.
To avoid fraud, verify with the company that they belong to TPO first, and if you are confident that they do, you could then enjoy the same benefit of avoiding fees whilst also getting a much faster sale. That’s because quick buyers can usually finalise the process of buying almost any home within a few weeks, and that covers exchanging contracts and paying you the proceeds.
Seven popular things people ask us about property fraud
We’ve seen everything since launching our property buying business in 2003, including stories of fraud, and have crafted these questions and answers on that topic:
Yes. There are some very clever criminals out there and the UK government’s own figures show that in recent years there have been hundreds of attempted property fraud cases for houses and flats totalling £133.4 million in value.
They often register with The Property Ombudsman (TPO) that sets all the rules for the quick property buying industry. Be sure to search TPO’s website; if you find a company listed there, you can trust they adhere to TPO requirements.
No. The service, offered by HM Land Registry, will simply notify you if someone makes an application against your property. You will still have to take action yourself to contact the authorities or a legal professional to intervene and stop the fraud.
Your exact potential risk of being a victim of property fraud will vary based on your unique homeownership circumstances. But some of the most common issues that can result in property fraud include if you have recently had your identify stolen, if you own a home in the UK but currently live overseas, if your property is currently empty, and if you don’t have a mortgage.
There are four typical methods for selling many types of property, and these are contacting a quick buyer like LDN Properties, selling at an auction, selling with an estate agent or selling without any assistance. You should research all of these options before making a decision because they have differences in terms of their costs, how long they take, and other factors.
Usually, the fastest way to sell any type of leasehold or freehold home is by getting in touch with a quick buyer like LDN Properties, because the entire process should only take a handful of weeks, and this includes the time needed to exchange contracts and pay you the proceeds. Selling on your own, at an auction or with an estate agent can all take several months.
If you sell without any assistance then you will not have to pay fees, and the same applies if you sell to an honest zero-commission quick buyer. Never sell to a quick buyer that says you will have to pay fees, because this is likely a scam. And you will have to pay commission if you use the services of an auctioneer or an estate agent and they succeed in selling the property.
